In a rare bit of good news for the beleaguered tech giant, Blackberry says five million users downloaded its BBM app for Android and iOS Monday.

The messaging service was set to launch on phones using Apple and Google’s mobile operating systems back in September but that date was pushed back until the company could work out some kinks. On Monday, however, the BBM app showed up in the App Store and Google Play for hundreds of millions of non-BlackBerry users to use the messaging app known for its reliability.

People who signed up with their emails ahead of time were allowed to download BBM immediately on Monday, and the company is methodically working through the rest of the line to avoid crashing its servers. People who sign up for the app at BBM.com are notified when a download becomes available.

BlackBerry Messenger has long been one of the most-loved parts of the Canadian phone company’s service, letting fellow BlackBerry owners send free messages and know when someone had read a message, as well as start group chats. Introduced during the era of pricey texting plans when carriers charged as much as 15 cents per message, BBM was truly ahead of its time.

Once the smartphone revolution took off and BlackBerry was leap-frogged by Apple and Google, many people yearned for a way to send BBMs between the competing platforms. The company, for whatever reason, resisted the move until CEO Thorsten Heins announced it this spring, perhaps in an effort to reinvent itself into more of a service company as its hardware sales continued to plummet.

Only time will tell if BBM on other platforms will encourage BlackBerry diehards to stick with the company now that it’s slightly less of a digital ghetto, or if this will be the impetus to finally ditch the CrackBerry for an iPhone or Android phone, so long as they can take one of the best BlackBerry features with them.